In the December 2021 issue of Proceedings magazine, retired Captain Robert C. Rubel mentioned ways to increase Navy’s presence overseas with a strained fleet and a “Ship Count” that remains ambiguous in the future due to budget constraints.
With issues of aging shipyard infrastructure and missed ship maintenance schedules, the Navy should “take to the skies” and purchase the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail multirole electronically scanned array (MESA) radar 737-700ER airborne early-warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft. Several of these E-7As could become huge force multipliers and game changers for the Navy and detach it from reliance on the Air Force’s Boeing E-3 Sentry airborne warning and control system (AWACS) planes that are often reserved for wartime combat and control usage, and not daily surveillance flights and regional patrol missions of maritime deterrence, detection and tracking, situational awareness, signals and electronics intelligence gathering, and presence.
A military 737 aircraft can be readied to fly in minutes compared to the preparations required for a warship to leave the pier during a scramble. Furthermore, the Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers’ propeller-driven E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes early-warning and control “digital quarterback” aircraft depend on the carriers for launching and landing and do not have the range, console stations, or loiter time compared to a Wedgetail. Without a carrier strike group present (CSG), the Navy lacks an AEW&C and aircraft presence outside of long-range drones and P-8A Poseidon antisubmarine warfare (ASW) aircraft that are already tasked with monitoring the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans for Russian submarine movements.
If possible, adding custom under-wing hardpoints for weapons would also benefit the Navy (and the E-7A), especially for defensive and emergency strike purposes. Having a stealthy aerodynamic streamlined weapons pod such as for the F-18 Advanced Super Hornet would enhance the E-7A’s multifunction capabilities and provide this important AEW&C aircraft with some potent and hidden firepower that might surprise the adversary in any chance encounters or attacks.
With joint partnership patrols with Air Force tanker support aircraft and, if necessary, long-range F-15EX or F-22 fighter escorts, the speculative Navy’s E-7A could provide real-time situational awareness of maritime and airborne traffic and targets; subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic adversary missile detection; guiding and tracking of allied missiles beyond radar range, battlefield management, an airborne sensor platform for theater air and missile defense, and sensor fusion thousands of miles from base. For instance, the E-2D has a range of 1,682 miles (1,462 nautical miles, 2,708 kilometers) whereƒas the E-7A has a range of 4,000 miles (3,500 nautical miles, 6,500 kilometers) and can transit wide bodies of water. Royal Australian Air Force E-7As have set routine records of 13-hour to 17-hour combat missions with two aerial refuelings to stay airborne, creating a presence that any carrier-based AEW&C aircraft cannot adequately compete with.
The goal here is not to have a Navy AEW&C aircraft for combat control and air traffic coordination missions forward deployed, but to have a manned radar surveillance and electronic signals collection aircraft that can monitor the sea and skies for aircraft and vessels and any adversary activity whenever and wherever necessary unlike the predicted overflight times of spy satellites or the rare missions of long-range, high-endurance unmanned aerial drone deployments.
The Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye is carrier-based and often does not stray far from the flattop and the carrier strike group, limiting the U.S. Navy’s usage, flexibility, situational awareness, and having a daily routine AEW&C aircraft “on call” whenever it needs it. Credit: Northrup Grumman.
Combat commanders know E-2Ds will usually not leave their assigned carrier air wing, but with E-7As, the combat commanders could have sensing and collecting aircraft deploy from Guam, Diego Garcia, Okinawa, and nearby Pacific island airfields to patrol around Asian Pacific nations . . . and the 737-700ER has the range to perform these missions. For instance, the distance is 3,910 miles (6,292 kilometers) from Diego Garcia to Taiwan and 1,867 miles (3,006 kilometers) from Guam to Fujian, China (the E-7A’s range is 4,000 miles). In comparison, to fly a RAAF E-7A from central Australia to Taiwan is a distance of 3,475 miles (5,592 kilometers).
Speed also plays a role, as the E-7A cruises at 530 mph (853 km/h, 460 knots) at a service ceiling of 41,000 feet (12,500 meters), and the E-2D has a speed of more than 300 knots at a service ceiling of 37,000 feet. The E-7A is superior, being twin jet–powered, so the advantages of the Navy acquiring some E-7As instead of using the deck-carrier E-2Ds when long-range naval presence and routine deterrence are clear. The Northrup Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton high-endurance high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle has a range of 9,400 miles (15,200 kilometers, 8,200 nautical miles) at a speed of 357 mph (575 km/h, 320 knots) and a service ceiling of 56,000 feet (17,000 meters), respectively. The Navy intends to base the MQ-4Cs at Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island, Washington. It is 6,473 miles (5,625 nautical miles or 10,418 kilometers) from Seattle, Washington, to Hong Kong, China. It would take a Navy MQ-4C flying from the West Coast of the United States at 357 mph more than 18 hours to reach Hong Kong to conduct surveillance; the MQ-4C has an endurance of 30 hours, so that is more than half of its endurance just to fly to the coast of China. The trip also would require a few pilot shifts at the flight control consoles just to get a MQ-4C to its station if not deployed forward and closer to the Asian Pacific Rim nations. Furthermore, the MQ-4C comes unarmed, unlike the postulated underwing armament of a hypothetical Navy E-7A.
Combined with South Korean, New Zealand, and Australian P-8As already in the region, U.S. Navy E-7As could provide improved situational awareness for sea, surface, undersea, and airborne control as an act of deterrence and “show the flag” if U.S. naval presence in the form of warships are not or cannot be on deployment patrols in the western Asian Pacific waters. E-7A overflights could monitor crisis situations instead of waiting for a CSG or amphibious ready group to deploy or steam towards the situation.
The goal of the U.S. Navy acquiring some E-7As is for routine forward-deployment for a daily maritime surveillance presence that the MQ-4C and E-2D cannot perform because of their lower speeds, lower range, lower endurance, smaller size, or distance basing. When Navy warships are not in the general area, E-7As can provide surveillance and overwatch independent of an carrier aircraft. Credit: Wikicommons
Another added benefit of having U.S. Navy E-7A comes from the expected peer-nation response toward the Air Force’s long-range strategic bombers that are forward-deployed to Guam and Diego Garcia. Their mission flights might get intercepted and escorted out of the regional airspace by adversary fighters, achieving not much besides a momentary “show of force” presence that will require hours of downtime maintenance after each flight. If such an “intercept and escort out” event was to happen with an E-7A, it could still gather informative signals-and-electronics intelligence information and radar and tracking data as it is being escorted out of the regional airspace. An E-7A, based on a Boeing commercial 737-700ER can then be turned around a lot faster at base for another mission flight compared to a complex, expensive, rare, high-maintenance, and perhaps stealthy Air Force strategic bomber that may have readiness issues.
Furthermore, the E-7As could be another option in the sensor-to-shooter role and “kill web” as depicted with medium unmanned surface vessels acting as sensors and in any joint-force network such as the Army’s Project Convergence and the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. This AEW&C aircraft also could help the Marine Corps achieve long-range precision fires targeting of land-based antiship missiles (such as NMESIS) and potential OpFires hypersonic missiles, and perform air traffic control and threat-detection warning for Marine Corps rotorcraft and warplanes.
In the future, and if acquired in effective and efficient numbers, the Navy might find itself pleasantly surprised with having several E-7As in its aircraft inventory for a rapid naval presence that surface warships cannot achieve because of the tyranny of distance and their slow speeds.
